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2008 May Test Clinton’s Bond With McCain

Senators John McCain, center, and Hillary Rodham Clinton at a news briefing during their 2005 trip to Iraq.Credit
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

WASHINGTON, July 28 — Two summers ago, on a Congressional trip to Estonia, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting that the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest.

Delighted, the leader of the delegation, Senator John McCain, quickly agreed. The after-dinner drinks went so well — memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much — that Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, later told people how unexpectedly engaging he found Mrs. Clinton to be. “One of the guys” was the way he described Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, to some Republican colleagues.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain went on to develop an amiable if professionally calculated relationship. They took more official trips together, including to Iraq. They worked together on the Senate Armed Services Committee and on the issue of global warming. They made a joint appearance last year on “Meet the Press,” interacting so congenially that the moderator, Tim Russert, joked about their forming a “fusion ticket.”

Politics being what it is, there is more friction than fusion. As the 2008 presidential campaign begins to take shape, with Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton at the top of the polls for their parties’ nominations, they are increasingly underscoring their differences on issues like the war in Iraq and port security. Advisers to Mr. McCain have put a stop to his inviting Mrs. Clinton on trips.

Whether their friendship is based on anything other than the respect of one political professional for another, or the opportunity to strike a tone of bipartisanship for public consumption, is unclear. But the interplay between the two senators, both well known and both with compelling personal narratives and a knack for infuriating their own parties’ bases, could determine the tone of the 2008 presidential race and make it less personally vicious than the last two campaigns.

Of course, Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton are a long way from facing off for the presidency. Neither has even officially announced a candidacy, and both would still have to endure a primary season that is shaping up to be intense. Neither would probably be the other’s first choice as a rival; both would no doubt prefer to run against someone less skilled in blurring ideological lines.

Still, members of both parties are already speculating about what a McCain-Clinton race would be like.

“If they get through a primary election, they would be polar opposites on policy,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close ally of Mr. McCain who has traveled with both senators. “On the major issues, it’d be a fairly clear choice. But I believe that the personal relationship hopefully could survive the political process.”

Harking to the days when a Republican president and a Democratic speaker of the House were friends, Mr. Graham said, “Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, at the end of the day, would go down to the White House and knock one back, and the country was no worse off for that.”

Rarely is it the case that likely presidential contenders are able to play off each other so much. Two modern races, in 1992 and 2000, pitted governors against Washington insiders, the candidates barely acquaintances. George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, recalled having met Vice President Al Gore only a few times before they debated onstage in 2000.

Four years later, despite their overlapping years at Yale and their work just down Pennsylvania Avenue from each other, President Bush and Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, made contact almost entirely over the airwaves.

This time, with so many senators thinking about running, the primaries and potentially the general election could find the candidates squaring off against colleagues who are operating in close proximity. Mr. Kerry served in Vietnam around the same time as Mr. McCain, who defended him against Republican attacks during the 2004 race. Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, devised a landmark campaign-finance bill with Mr. McCain (and has since traveled with him and with Mrs. Clinton).

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain, however, share not just a title, but also a general approach to politics. Both strive to be seen as willing to break with ideological orthodoxy from time to time and to work across the aisle. Both emerged from nasty political battles — Whitewater and her husband’s impeachment in her case, the 2000 Republican primaries in his — declaring their hatred of the “politics of personal destruction,” as former President Bill Clinton called it.

“They would run a completely different campaign than we’ve seen in recent memory,” said Marshall Wittman, a former aide to Mr. McCain who has worked with Mrs. Clinton.

“Both of them realize there is a desire in the country for a different politics of national unity that transcends the current polarization,” Mr. Wittman said.

At the same time, both have endured serious presidential campaigns before and market themselves as independent power brokers within their parties.

“That’s their great commonality,” Mr. Wittman said. “Obviously, if they faced each other in a general, they would emphasize their differences.”

A friendly relationship, or just the appearance of one, brings risks and advantages to both, although political strategists agreed it was wise for Mr. McCain to distance himself from Mrs. Clinton. (One reason is that Republicans said they could imagine a photograph of Mr. McCain with Mrs. Clinton, considered one of the most polarizing Democrats in politics, being used in a negative ad during a Republican primary.) Mr. McCain is also weakest among conservative Republicans, who dislike his willingness to take independent stands and work with Democrats.

Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, has been working to convince moderate voters that she is a centrist who can work across the aisle, a claim bolstered by Mr. McCain’s tacit approval of her.

Both senators are accustomed to being sought out by other politicians hoping to burnish their own images. What makes their rapport different, advisers said, is that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain are essentially of equal stature.

During their Estonia trip — also attended by Mr. Graham and Senators John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine — Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton were the ones recognized as they walked through the streets of the capital, Tallinn.

It was during their joint trip to Iraq in late February 2005 that Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton appeared via satellite on “Meet the Press,” an appearance that put their civility on display. When Mr. Russert asked Mr. McCain at the end of the interview whether he thought Mrs. Clinton would make a good president, Mrs. Clinton came to his rescue, saying: “Oh, we can’t hear you, Tim!”

“Yeah, you’re breaking up,” Mr. McCain added, laughing. But then he said: “I happen to be a Republican and would support, obviously, a Republican nominee, but I have no doubt that Senator Clinton would make a good president.”

Asked the same question about him, Mrs. Clinton replied without skipping a beat: “Absolutely.”

Mr. McCain’s advisers played down their relationship, saying he was friendly with a number of Democrats. “They underscore their differences every day,” John Weaver, a political adviser to the senator, said of Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton. “That doesn’t mean you treat each other less civilly.”

Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said: “They are colleagues who have worked and traveled together on issues of interest to both, such as support for our military and global warming, and they agree to disagree on issues such as requiring greater scrutiny of foreign government ownership of our ports.”

But Mr. Reines said Mrs. Clinton’s advisers had not noticed any recent changes in her relationship with Mr. McCain, and he declined to elaborate on the rounds of vodka.

“What happens in Estonia stays in Estonia,” Mr. Reines said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: 2008 May Test Clinton’s Bond With McCain. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe